Rebecca Scofield, a University of Idaho historian who successfully sued a Texas TikTok psychic for falsely accusing her of involvement in the killing of four students, has described the ordeal’s impact on her family and personal life in a new opinion essay. She said fears for her children’s safety left her awake at night, sometimes standing guard while they slept.
Scofield, 41, first discovered Ashley Guillard’s baseless videos on Thanksgiving, fewer than two weeks after the murders. Court records offer a stark account of the fear and disruption that followed.
“I went and laid in my son’s bed because his bedroom is the closest to an entrance to our house,” Scofield testified at trial. “And I was so afraid for him, so I just sat there at the end of his bed all night and watched him.”
A still image taken from one of Ashley Guillard’s TikTok videos falsely linking a University of Idaho professor to the murders of four undergraduates she had never met. (TikTok/ashleyisinthebookoflife4)
The situation became increasingly distressing as Guillard continued posting videos, Scofield wrote Monday in an op-ed for The New York Times.
“Over the next several weeks, while I was grieving with the rest of my community, this TikTok influencer uploaded over a hundred videos declaring that I had committed a quadruple homicide,” she wrote. “The videos got millions of views. I was overwhelmed with calls, messages, comments and emails, many of which were disturbing or threatening. And I could have been anyone.”
Rebecca Scofield, chair of the University of Idaho’s history department, appears in a portrait on the school’s website. The Harvard-educated historian won $10 million after being falsely accused of orchestrating the murders of four undergraduate students. (University of Idaho)
Sleepless nights gave way to late-night patrols in the hallway outside her children’s rooms. Scofield stopped attending classes in person and taught remotely. Although she remained at home, she said she also felt vulnerable there.
Guillard continued making accusations after Scofield’s attorneys sent a cease-and-desist letter, after Moscow police publicly said Scofield was not a suspect and even after investigators arrested Bryan Kohberger in connection with the killings.
Madison Mogen, top left, smiles while sitting on the shoulders of her best friend, Kaylee Goncalves, as they pose with Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and two other housemates in Goncalves’ final Instagram post, shared the day before the four students were stabbed to death. (@kayleegoncalves/Instagram)
“I was not hit by a bus or punched in the face,” Scofield wrote. “Yet I saw up close how the online world can come to feel more real than the physical one. Even after the actual murderer was arrested and convicted, the accusations against me continued. And even though these outrageous claims were made online by someone I had never met, they were amplified by unsuspecting viewers and algorithm-driven platforms, and the harm seeped into every aspect of my life.”
Scofield also used the essay to argue that social media companies have too little accountability when they amplify potentially defamatory and damaging claims.
“We can try to hold platforms accountable for the harmful content they spread,” Scofield wrote. “A federal law, Section 230, protects online platforms from many defamation lawsuits, meaning that only individuals are liable for misinformation, even if a platform helped spread it. Proposals that would reform Section 230 range from adding exceptions for extreme cases to revoking immunity for social media companies altogether. If the companies making billions of dollars off these platforms won’t protect us, what other recourse do we have?”
Bryan Kohberger appears at the Ada County Courthouse for his sentencing hearing on Wednesday, July 23, 2025, in Boise, Idaho. (AP Photo/Kyle Green, Pool)
“We can sue,” she added, “and we can also share our stories.”
Scofield did both. A federal jury awarded her $10 million in her defamation lawsuit against Guillard, a 41-year-old Houston woman who repeatedly posted videos accusing Scofield of directing the murders and having an extramarital same-sex affair with one of the victims. Guillard offered no evidence for the claims and has appealed the verdict to the Ninth Circuit.
“I came to realize that all of us are responsible for the online world we inhabit, and all of us must fight its tendency to propagate lies,” Scofield wrote.
University of Idaho students Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were killed in a November 2022 attack at an off-campus home on King Road in Moscow, Idaho. (Idaho Statesman/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Scofield’s warning placed social media in the broader history of transformative communication technologies. She pointed to the printing press’s influence on Christianity and argued that “the radio helped fuel the rise of fascism across the U.S. and Europe.”
“Digital platforms rewrite our reality in a much more profound way,” she wrote. “It takes a long time to uncover the truth through historical analysis, and even then, it’s often at best partial. Social media destroys that process. Even though many content creators hold themselves to high standards of research, they are not professionally beholden to official codes of conduct or review.”
Scofield and a spokesperson for TikTok did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Last year, Kohberger admitted to the murders of Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20. All four were University of Idaho undergraduate students. The three young women lived in a rental home off campus with two other roommates, and Chapin was spending the night over with Kernodle, his girlfriend.
All four were killed in a 4 a.m. home invasion stabbing on Nov. 13, 2022.
In July, Kohberger petitioned the court in an attempt to take back his plea. He’s due to attend a virtual court hearing Thursday on a motion to have the judge taken off his case as part of that process.
